


Patched

by pumpkinonwheels



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:51:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinonwheels/pseuds/pumpkinonwheels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-3.01. </p>
<p>"She's patched him before."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patched

**Author's Note:**

> This is the clear result of listening to my angst-y Arrow playlist too many times the past few days.

She’s patched him before.

She’s bandaged and stitched him. She’s pried bullets from his muscles and injected antidotes into his bloodstream. She’s kept him cool while a fever raged, smoothed his hair back as he shivered with infection, talked and talked and talked to keep him conscious after a concussion.

It’s terrible. Every time he stumbles in bloody, or worse, when he’s carried in broken, it’s terrible. But she doesn’t complain. She bites her cheek and swallows her worry with her blood while she does what needs doing.

After all, it’s not like he hasn’t patched her, too. He knows what it is to stand over her limp body, to feel cold steel under his fists and fear that her skin might be cool soon too. She knows he knows, though they’ve never discussed it.

They could each of them inventory the others’ injuries. She could make a spreadsheet for his, maybe color-coded.

_Stabbings are red,_  
 _Bullets are blue._  
 _Concussions are green,  
_ _And so are you._

She doubts he’d write her inventory down. He’d probably just repeat the list in his mind like a chant—no, like a confession.

So. She’s patched him before. He’s returned the favor.

She wasn’t ready for this, though. She doesn’t know how to watch him bleed with no blood, to hurt with no wound, to die with no cause.

No. That’s not true. There’s a cause: she walked away.

She doesn’t know how to fix him when she’s the one who broke him.

Every day, she watches him in her screens’ reflections. He polishes his bows and sharpens his arrows and punches his dummy. He does all the right things. She tells herself he’s fine; he’ll recover; they’ll _both_ recover. 

But she’s seen his eyes gloss with internal bleeding before, and this isn’t that. His eyes aren’t glazed—they’re dull. She doesn't know how to meet Oliver's dull eyes. She's seen the life drain from them before when he was close, so close to gone, but never the light. He thinks he's all shadow, but even shadows need light to exist. 

She wonders if he sees the signs in her, too. Her unpainted nails, maybe. Or how she’s been typing slower. Or some change she doesn’t even notice. ( _It was red_.)

Will he add this to her inventory like she’s added it to his?

_Stabbings are red,_  
 _Bullets are blue._  
 _Your heart is broken,  
_ _And mine is too._

They’ve patched each other before. It won’t be enough this time.


End file.
